When chilled in water it has all the properties of steel: see the piece marked I, chilled at one end, and left soft at the other.
When worked hot, it is very malleable: but cold, it breaks quite short and brittle.
The great irregularity found in the working of the iron affords evidence that it has been prepared by inexperienced hands.
This is shown in the bending of the small spade; the thick portion retains its crystallized nature, while the thin part has been changed by the hammering it has undergone.
The large spade shows a very brittle fracture.
The iron is too brittle for gun-work; it would be liable to break.
This iron, if REPEATEDLY heated and hammered, would become decarbonized, and would then possess the qualities found in the spear-head, which, after being curled up by being struck against a hard substance, was restored, by hammering, to its original form without injury.
The piece of iron marked II is a piece of gun-iron of fibrous quality, such as will bend without breaking.
The piece marked III is of crystalline quality; it has been submitted to a process which has changed it to IIII; III and IIII are cut from the same bar. The spade-iron has been submitted to the same process, but no corresponding effect can be produced.
The iron ore exists in great abundance, but I did not find any limestone in its immediate vicinity. So far as I could learn, there is neither copper nor silver. Malachite is worked by the people of Cazembe, but, as I did not see it, nor any other metal, I can say nothing about it. A few precious stones are met with, and some parts are quite covered with agates. The mineralogy of the district, however, has not been explored by any one competent to the task.
When my friend the commandant was fairly recovered, and I myself felt strong again, I prepared to descend the Zambesi. A number of my men were out elephant-hunting, and others had established a brisk trade in firewood, as their countrymen did at Loanda. I chose sixteen of those who could manage canoes to convey me down the river. Many more would have come, but we were informed that there had been a failure of the crops at Kilimane from the rains not coming at the proper time, and thousands had died of hunger. I did not hear of a single effort having been made to relieve the famishing by sending them food down the river. Those who perished were mostly slaves, and others seemed to think that their masters ought to pay for their relief. The sufferers were chiefly among those natives who inhabit the delta, and who are subject to the Portuguese. They are in a state of slavery, but are kept on farms and mildly treated. Many yield a certain rental of grain only to their owners, and are otherwise free. Eight thousand are said to have perished. Major Sicard lent me a boat which had been built on the river, and sent also Lieutenant Miranda to conduct me to the coast.
A Portuguese lady who had come with her brother from Lisbon, having been suffering for some days from a severe attack of fever, died about three o'clock in the morning of the 20th of April. The heat of the body having continued unabated till six o'clock, I was called in, and found her bosom quite as warm as I ever did in a living case of fever. This continued for three hours more. As I had never seen a case in which fever-heat continued so long after death, I delayed the funeral until unmistakable symptoms of dissolution occurred. She was a widow, only twenty-two years of age, and had been ten years in Africa. I attended the funeral in the evening, and was struck by the custom of the country. A number of slaves preceded us, and fired off many rounds of gunpowder in front of the body. When a person of much popularity is buried, all the surrounding chiefs send deputations to fire over the grave. On one occasion at Tete, more than thirty barrels of gunpowder were expended. Early in the morning of the 21st the slaves of the deceased lady's brother went round the village making a lamentation, and drums were beaten all day, as they are at such times among the heathen.